This Week in Ontario Edublogs

Sheila Stewart wrote an interesting post about the use of the “real world” when it comes to educational discussions. I had a few smiles at the use of the term.

First, I thought of my Grade 8 teacher who told us daily that we’d never make it in Collegiate. Her pronunciation “Kaleeeeeeejit”. When it came time to sign up for high school, I was actually intimidated against English classes and chose a bunch of maths and businesses instead. When I took some English, I rather enjoyed it. The teachers didn’t get into drill and kill and learning all of the weird things of the English language. I wonder if I hadn’t been intimidated by the words whether things would have turned out differently for me.

But, in mathematics, we had our own expression. “Reductio ad absurdum” – which we were told meant any idiot could see the end of the solution. I think that “real world” is often used for the purpose of stopping intellectual debate. After all, how can you argue with “real world”?

And, it leads nicely into another word that you never, ever challenge – “authentic”

So, Scott Kemp used the word “authentic” in the title of a post. It’s got to be important then!

He challenges himself (and we the readers) about the audience that we blog to or tweet to or read to and does make you think. I think his questions would be really important if everyone was reading or blogging or tweeting but as he notes, not everyone is.

I like his last question. In my case, the answer is “me”. I get a kick from the fact that a bunch of people read my blog or my tweets but, at the end of the day, I’m the audience that benefits from this. I use it to recognize my own personal learning. Everything else is gravy. But, it’s good gravy. I’d be kidding myself if I relied on you, yes you, to read this blog every day and that’s my reason for writing. I know that I can count on myself to create this; proofread it; publish it; and then check that it’s made live when it’s supposed to.

This post, by Kyle Pearce, actually goes back a couple of months but it’s a good one and every iPad teacher should take a look at it. Explain Everything is one of a few applications that let you create a video screencast of what you’re doing on your iPad. There’s also “Show Me” and my favourite “Screen Chomp”.

They all record the screen and your voice and let you play it back. I would think that this is a required app for mathematics whether it be face to face or online. It’s a great product that will let you record your thinking as your thinking it and then play it back. Sort of an educational rewind.

Heather Durnin shares a “back to” story from her classroom. As you read the article, her use of the HT Recorder mirrors what “Explain Everything” does in the mathematics class. One of the things common to both is to pick up on the nuances of thinking in a particular activity. Through playback, you hope that the students notice it.

According to Heather, this recorder picks up even the most quiet voices in a discussion. That sounds like a great tool to bring everyone into the conversation.

There are a couple of things that I brought out in a post of my own this week.

1) One Tab is an incredible extension for Google Chrome users who end up with a huge number of tabs open over time. It will collapse them all into a single tab and release some memory to the system. Both are desirable results.

2) I shared the link to One Tab and Brandon Grasley picked up on it. From a distance, the two of us went back and forth testing the extension and sharing our results. We did it all in the open and more than a few people found out about it as well. The whole concept of learning and sharing with the world was just so powerful and really confirmed why connections matter.

Tim King is wondering just what sort of presentation that he’s going to deliver at #ECOO13. He mused about Web 1.0 and then moved to Web 2.0 and now Web 3.0 on the horizon?

In my comments to Tim, I wondered about the state of those who have not jumped on the bus so far – can they get on when Web 3.0 rolls around? (whatever that is) Tim gave a nice reply putting it into the perspective of the industrial age. But, I suspect it’s going to come a lot faster.

Please take the time to read the highlighted blogs above and share a comment or two. The authors will appreciate it. You can check out the rest of the Ontario Edublogger collection here.